Social Shifts Drive Multicultural Marketing
worked with Geoscape, a business intelligence provider, to garner accurate data on its diverse market base, using Geoscape's American Marketspace DataStream and Consumer Spending Dynamix tools to determine hot spots where drugs are needed.
"Our Marketspace tool offers geodemographic exploration, mapping, graphing, database queries, and tabular reporting functions as well as detailed, color-coded maps that can be generated from state to block group levels throughout the U.S. and other countries of the world," Cesar Melgoza, CEO and founder of Geoscape, says.
The data used to fuel these maps includes Geoscape's own American Marketspace DataStream as well as U.S. Census Bureau data. It can be viewed in graphical and tabular format, then exported into Microsoft Excel for further analysis, Melgoza explains. The Consumer Spending Dynamix tool can, in turn, determine spending habits of consumers in the select groups as well.
After using Geoscape's tools to identify new market growth opportunities within multicultural segments, which are strategic to the long-term growth of companies in the healthcare space, AstraZeneca was able to gain a deeper understanding of its consumers geographically and culturally, and ultimately save money by relying on more targeted advertising.
"To develop effective marketing campaigns and ensure the most efficient use of the budget, one must understand the regional, market, and community level nuances inherent in each targeted cultural group. Geoscape can greatly assist in the identification and analysis of these microcultural differences," Phyllis Woolley-Roy, director of multicultural marketing at AstraZeneca, says.
"Once populations are mapped by ethnicity and spending habits [and the information is combined with known data on ailments that occur most frequently within certain cultural groups], marketing becomes much more on point," Melgoza adds.
It is known, for example, that diabetes is 60 percent more common in black Americans than in white Americans, and black patients are up to 2.5 times more likely to suffer a limb amputation and up to 5.6 times more likely to suffer kidney disease than other people with diabetes, according to Daniel DeNoon, senior medical expert at WebMD. African-Americans are also three times more likely to die of asthma than white Americans, he asserts, and strokes kill four times as many 35- to 54-year-old black Americans as they do white Americans.
"If a brand already has some cultural-specific data on a group within [its] client base, helping [it] map out this client base can make a world of difference when it comes to multicultural marketing. With a by-culture, by-characteristic view of a consumer, we're putting all the tools that marketers need in their hands," Melgoza says.
Marketing platforms cross the cultural chasm
While not all brands are capable of developing a problem- or value-targeted campaign that can be presented in multiple languages, some of the best marketing platforms are ones that are able to capitalize on this strategy.
Cross-cultural advertising agency Ameredia recently produced multilingual messaging for Comcast's Internet Essentials campaign, a broadband adoption program for families that have at least one child eligible to participate in the National School Lunch Program. Ameredia's team not only created the campaign in several languages, but also incorporated elements that resonated with the target demographic—a focus on family, children, and education.
More than 29 percent of Americans are still disconnected by the digital divide as reported by Mashable, but the disconnect is even greater among minorities. Comcast sought to reach out to members of this population, and provide them with an affordable Internet option that would enable their children to do their homework, fill out college applications, and take care of other essential tasks.
To tackle Comcast's needs, Ameredia produced culturally appealing marketing materials for the program. "In partnership with Ameredia, Comcast was able to extend the reach of its Internet Essentials program to more diverse audiences by providing materials in twelve languages. In doing so, Internet Essentials continues to gain momentum and make a difference in our communities," Peter Intermaggio, senior vice president of marketing communications at Comcast, says.
Through the collaboration, Internet Essentials now connects with the Arabic, Chinese, Haitian, Hmong, Korean, Oromo, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Somali, Tibetan, and Vietnamese cultures. Materials include brochures, flyers, and posters.
Ultimately, the cultural materials specific to each group were tested internally and introduced in the market by the client through its sales teams and network of participating schools. The unifying themes and branding consistency across all 72 marketing pieces connected well with the mainstream corporate marketing efforts, and the uniqueness of each marketing piece and its appeal to its ethnic audience resonated strongly for all 12 targeted groups, according to Ameredia's Web site.
As marketers continue to tackle the changes spurred by the social shift among minority consumers, multicultural marketing is becoming a priority. Though some minorities are beginning to rise socioeconomically, many are still struggling with social crises including healthcare cost concerns and limited access to modern day essentials such as the Internet. While the population's needs are changing, marketing opportunities abound.
"I's a fluid time right now in the realm of multicultural marketing," Melgoza says, "and marketers have a unique opportunity to not only do their jobs well by targeting key audience groups, but also help groups that are struggling as well as groups that are transitioning."
Associate Editor Maria Minsker can be reached at mminsker@infotoday.com.